Neo-Nazi victims to be paid over €800,000

Published: 29 Oct 2012 12:53 GMT+01:00

The German government is paying more than €800,000 to relatives of the victims of a neo-Nazi terrorist gang which is said to have murdered ten people by shooting them, and hurt more with a nail bomb, it emerged on Monday.

A Federal Office of Justice (BfJ) report, dated August and seen by the Neue Osnabrücker Zeitung newspaper, said a total of €832,407.67 was in the process of being paid to the families of the victims, and that the compensation had been agreed by the Justice Ministry.

The spouses and children of the ten people murdered by the National Socialist Underground (NSU) gang are set to receive €10,000 each, while siblings will get €5,000 and funeral costs will be reimbursed to the families.

Around €140,000 has already been paid to victims of a nail bombing carried out in Cologne in 2004, where 22 people were injured, the report said.

The compensation structure was based on guidelines set out in 2009, which determines how much is paid to victims of far-right extremism.

In the document, BfJ President Heinz-Josef Friehe wrote that the decisions had been made in view of the "particularly severity of the damage done or to alleviate any shortfall in income that may have occurred."

The NSU spent a decade carrying out the killings, bombings and bank robberies before finally being tracked down in November last year. The trio murdered nine small-business owners of immigrant background and a German policewoman between 2000 and 2007.

They were stopped when two of them - Uwe Mundlos and Uwe Böhnhardt - were cornered by police after a botched bank raid. Mundlos shot Böhnhardt and then himself in the caravan.

The third member of the group, Beate Zschäpe, gave herself up to police a few days later, but not before she destroyed evidence by setting fire to their shared flat in Zwickau, Saxony.

Zschäpe and at least 11 people thought to have abetted the group over the decade are likely to face charges before the end of the year, Interior Minister Hans-Peter Friedrich said on a TV chat show on Sunday.

Over the past year, a parliamentary committee has uncovered details of the German security forces' failure to track down the NSU, despite having several informants within the neo-Nazi scene who were close to the trio.

Friedrich defended the security forces against accusations that they had been obstructing the committee's investigation, and said the "internal operations" of the secret service had to be protected.

The Trio and the 11 people believed to have abetted the group. Hardly a significant number. I am concerned that the police had inside informants that were close to the trio, and it wasn't until a failed robbery that they were in custody.Lots of unanswered questions there.

@ StoutViking - What does Jonny K's tragic death have to do with it all now? Because the people who killed him were German Turks and here we're talking about Greek and Turkish men killed by nazis?

Do you need to bring up the fact that there are Turkish murderers every time there is a news item about the Turkish families who got destroyed by neo-nazis? You need to get over your ignorant xenophobic self.

We're talking about 9 hardworking fathers and husbands who got killed in cold blood just because they looked "foreign", and one 23 year-old blonde policewoman on top. We're talking about a banned organisation that violated several chapters of the German Constitution and went on a rampage detonating bombs and robbing banks. We're talking about a shambles of police investigation that denied justice to the aggrieved families for a decade, that suspected the murdered businessmen got themselves in trouble because, of course, they must have had dirty connections with criminal underworlds. We're talking about a network that not only were allowed to commit their crimes, but which indeed received indirect help from the police and from the Verfassungsschutz that paid "informants" for nothing in return (with my taxes). And who swiftly destroyed files when things started to stink.

This whole story is a disgrace for Germany, and it is just right that the authorities finally do something about it all.

Jonny K.'s death is tragic. There are not enough words to describe how much this savage killing by a cowardly mob of youths, in a place that I visit often btw, makes me sad and angry. But death is properly investigated on, by competent police that will not make biased, negative assumptions about the victim. His family will probably benefit from supportive authorities, rather than getting insult on top of injury for the next decade. I am very glad about all this.

Firstly, I'm not a sir. Secondly, I'm a racial minority myself, and third, calling people idiots doesn't put you in much of a good light but rather as one such incapable of having a civilized discussion. You know, the kind where you try to enlighten me with your "wisdom".

I am only trying to bring up how it appears that some violence victims blood appears to be redder than the others. The Zwickau cell was without doubt racially motivated in its attacks, but to the authorities it seems that whenever the assailants are white Germans and the victims are foreigners or such with foreign background, it should get more media attention and you'll find sentencing to be much harsher and the crime labelled as "racially motivated", whereas when it's the other way around it's "normal crime" and the courts are often lenient with sentences and we don't hear of high compensations given to the families of the victims.

Have you perhaps considered that there might be a racist motive behind this attack too? Or perhaps in your mind only Germans (or whites in general) could be racist?

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